Disposable Laptop Works As A Metaphor, Not As An Actual Product

There’s no doubt about it: Today, the concept of a disposable laptop is totally ridiculous. But you know what else was ridiculous? Disposable cameras, 60 years ago. And this thing just looks fantastic, so I’ll let it slide. Also: symbolism!

There are a lot of holes you could poke in this concept, like the flippant use of meaningless terms like “bio chip” and buzzwords like “convergence” and “high technology”, and the fact that by the time vital components like the battery and display are cheap enough to throw away — that’ll be 2020, according to the designer’s completely arbitrary calculations — laptops, or whatever we’re using, probably won’t be shaped like this.

But if you think about it, we’re heading toward this kind of design anyway: flimsy, dirt-cheap netbooks seem to have a short intended lifespan, and hell, even my polycarbonate MacBook felt like it was beginning to disintegrate after about two years of heavy use. It may not have been cardboard, but in its own way, it sure felt disposable. [Yanko]

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Non-replaceable lithium battery (or you can't buy a replacement battery by the time your original starts to die) = disposable laptop. It's not a tongue in cheek comment, engineered disposability is the norm in consumer electronics.